What’s the solution to the big question of driving payment for quality content? Power to the people.

Medium has done a fantastic job building a platform that people love and that the world deeply needed — but to successfully sustain themselves, they must tap into this base of dedicated users and loyal fans.

In an attempt to build an alternative to an incentive-driven system, Medium ran headfirst into the same problematic, ad-driven model it set out to save.

Content marketing taught us to create valuable content for the banner-blind masses, but what did we get?

Junk content dumped out by the truckload by brands trying to compete in an oversaturated online marketing world.

No matter what tactics we try to get more attention, more traffic, more clicks, we’ll always fail. In the sales and marketing rat race, the people we are trying to win over will always win in the end.

True success isn’t built from businesses talking about themselves, but from people talking about businesses.

Make banner ads, and customers will stop looking. Turn to creating valuable, relevant content — then there’s too much, and none of it counts.

Companies can only succeed by tapping into their biggest marketing & advertising asset: the diehard fans, devoted customers, and passionate brand advocates that are already out there canvassing for them.

Just look at the v-commerce companies like Warby Parker, Glossier, and Bonobos: They were all successful due to their intensely customer-driven approach.

They built a cult following, and the money followed.

As Andy Dunn explained, even when competing against eCommerce goliaths like Amazon, vComm brands win because of their “maniacal focus on customer experience and customer intimacy.”

Warby Parker grew by asking customers to share photos of its glasses online, Glossier grew by building an insanely devoted group of fans drooling at the opportunity to try the blog-to-brand’s products, and Bonobos grew by word-of-mouth — which, as we all know, has the potential to spread in a wildfire no brand-driven marketing campaign could.

But it’s not just eCommerce — B2B businesses also have their most devoted users, newspapers their most devoted readers, and Medium their most devoted content creators, consumers, and curators.

Sure, this may not be the easiest answer to Medium’s monetizing troubles, but it is the only solution to the current content marketing and online advertising wall we’ve built for ourselves.

Customers can even out advertise us: social media ads featuring customer stories get 4x higher click through rates and 50% drop in cost-per-click than branded advertisements.

Of course, there’s no simple solution for Medium and other publishers, but in times like these, it’s important that we remember Medium’s word of mouth roots: a trickle of users soon became a flood.

Five years ago, we waited for an invite to the party, eager to join without even knowing who would attend or how it would end.

And even through Medium’s struggles, it’s still us party guests lingering, cheering our host on.

Ev Williams is right when he says a system that serves the people is possible, achievable, and imperative: serving the people means giving power to the people.